The darkness blinked.
Daniel Cross had faced armed men, giant monsters, and the unsettling realization that his own body was apparently a government-funded science experiment with legs.
Yet somehow, none of those experiences had prepared him for an enormous eye opening inside a stone structure beneath a city currently being eaten by Titans.
The eye had no visible pupil.
Its surface shimmered like black water, reflecting things that weren't in the room.
Daniel saw the underground laboratory.
He saw the broken equipment.
He saw Elias Voss standing beside him.
And he saw himself.
Not the Daniel standing in the chamber.
Another Daniel.
The other version was strapped to a metal table, his chest split open beneath an array of surgical instruments. Black veins crawled beneath his skin. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in a scream that produced no sound.
Then the image disappeared.
Daniel stumbled backward.
"Absolutely not."
Arlen grabbed his arm. "What?"
"I've officially decided that whatever happens next, I'm against it."
"That's your plan?"
"It's the best one I've had all morning."
"Your plans are usually terrible!"
"And yet you keep following me. Perhaps we should examine your judgment."
The floor shuddered.
Dust fell from the ceiling. Several overhead lamps burst simultaneously, plunging half the laboratory into darkness.
Mira stood before the broken structure, barefoot and motionless.
Her black eyes remained fixed on the enormous eye in the darkness.
"He can see us now," she whispered.
Elias went pale.
For the first time since Daniel had met him, the old researcher looked genuinely frightened.
"Everyone away from the structure," he ordered.
Daniel stared at him.
"You brought us into a secret underground laboratory containing a mysterious stone tree, a little girl who apparently has administrator privileges over my brain, and whatever the hell that thing is."
He pointed at the enormous eye.
"And now you're telling us to walk away?"
"Yes."
"Wonderful. Very reassuring. I especially appreciate the part where you explain absolutely nothing."
"Daniel, move!"
Something struck the other side of the chamber.
The sound was enormous.
Metal screamed. Glass shattered. The central machine flickered, its display filling with lines of rapidly changing symbols.
Daniel's system activated without his permission.
[WARNING: FOREIGN SIGNAL SATURATION.]
[EVOLUTIONARY NETWORK ACCESS ATTEMPT DETECTED.]
[UNKNOWN ENTITY: THE FIRST.]
[HOST CONNECTION STATUS: UNSTABLE.]
[RECOMMENDATION: IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL.]
Daniel's vision blurred.
A pressure developed behind his eyes, followed by a sudden, vicious hunger.
Not the ordinary hunger of someone who had skipped breakfast.
This was something older.
Something that didn't care whether the food was bread, meat, or the man standing beside him.
It wanted everything.
The warmth in Arlen's body.
The blood moving through Elias's veins.
The strange energy radiating from Mira.
The ancient thing behind the glass.
For one terrible moment, Daniel understood how easy it would be to stop thinking.
To stop caring.
To let the hunger decide what he became.
His fingers curled.
A sharp pain pierced his palm.
He looked down.
His fingernails had begun to darken. Thin black lines spread beneath the skin of his wrist.
"No," he growled.
The system responded.
[FOREIGN SIGNAL ATTEMPTING TO OVERRIDE HOST PRIORITIES.]
[EMERGENCY COUNTERMEASURE AVAILABLE.]
[COUNTERMEASURE: COGNITIVE FIREWALL.]
[REQUIRED RESOURCE: NEURAL STABILITY.]
[WARNING: CURRENT BIOLOGICAL CONDITION INSUFFICIENT FOR SAFE IMPLEMENTATION.]
Daniel almost laughed.
"Of course it is."
Arlen shook him.
"Daniel!"
Daniel looked up.
Arlen's face was pale, but his grip remained firm.
"Look at me!"
"I am looking at you."
"No, you're looking through me!"
Daniel tried to answer.
The hunger surged again.
Arlen's throat moved as he swallowed.
"You're the one who told me that monsters don't get to decide what we are."
Daniel remembered saying something like that.
He also remembered that he'd been trying to sound impressive at the time.
It was considerably less impressive now that his own body was attempting to turn him into a walking buffet.
Arlen tightened his grip.
"So decide!"
For a second, Daniel saw the laboratory through Arlen's eyes.
A frightened boy.
A stranger with blood on his hands.
A little girl standing before an ancient horror.
And a man who had promised to protect people without having the slightest idea what he was protecting them from.
Daniel forced his fingers open.
"I'm deciding."
He focused on the system.
"Activate the firewall."
[WARNING: IMPLEMENTATION MAY CAUSE MEMORY FRAGMENTATION.]
"Do it."
[WARNING: NEURAL STABILITY MAY FALL BELOW SAFE THRESHOLD.]
"Then try not to kill me. I've got plans."
[CLARIFICATION REQUIRED: DEFINE PLANS.]
"Surviving the next five minutes would be a fantastic start!"
[COGNITIVE FIREWALL INITIATED.]
Pain exploded through his skull.
Daniel dropped to one knee.
The laboratory disappeared.
For an instant, he stood in a white room.
There were no windows.
No doors.
Only a long table covered in medical equipment and a young girl sitting on its edge.
Mira.
Except this Mira looked older.
Not by much, perhaps a few years, but the difference was unmistakable. Her hair was shorter, her face thinner, and her eyes were not black.
They were human.
Tired.
Terrified.
She held a small wooden horse in her hands.
Daniel knew that horse.
He didn't know how.
He simply knew.
The girl looked at him.
"You said you'd come back before they changed you."
Daniel tried to move.
His body wouldn't respond.
"What happened to me?"
Mira's expression crumpled.
"They made you forget."
"Who?"
She looked toward something behind him.
Daniel turned.
A man stood at the far end of the room.
His face was hidden behind a smooth white mask. Long surgical gloves covered his hands. Dark stains marked the front of his coat.
The man spoke in a voice Daniel recognized.
His own voice.
"Memory is a weakness, Subject Cross."
The room trembled.
Mira reached for Daniel.
"Don't let him open the door."
"What door?"
"The one inside you."
The white room split apart.
Something enormous pressed against the other side.
Daniel heard a sound like millions of people whispering simultaneously.
Then the system dragged him back.
He returned to the laboratory with a strangled gasp.
Arlen was crouched beside him.
Elias stood several feet away, holding a small metal device that emitted a high-pitched whine.
Mira had turned toward Daniel.
Her black eyes widened.
"You remembered."
Daniel clutched his head.
"I remembered approximately six seconds of something deeply unpleasant."
[COGNITIVE FIREWALL: TEMPORARILY ACTIVE.]
[FOREIGN SIGNAL INTENSITY: REDUCED.]
[NEURAL STABILITY: 68%.]
[MEMORY FRAGMENT RECOVERED.]
[CLASSIFICATION: RESTRICTED.]
Daniel stared at the notification.
He'd lost a considerable amount of neural stability.
Whatever that meant in practical terms, it sounded bad.
He filed the complaint away for later.
Assuming there was a later.
"What was that?" Arlen demanded.
"Apparently, my brain has a basement."
"That makes no sense."
"Neither does anything else in this building, but here we are."
Elias approached, his expression unreadable.
"Did you experience a memory?"
Daniel looked at him.
"Why?"
"Because the firewall is designed to suppress foreign signals. If you experienced a memory during activation, it means the signal was interacting with something already inside your mind."
"Something you know about?"
Elias hesitated.
That hesitation was more informative than any answer he could have given.
Daniel slowly stood.
"You know something."
"I know that your memories were altered."
"You told me that already."
"I didn't tell you how."
Daniel's jaw tightened.
"Then perhaps this would be an excellent time to stop speaking in mysterious half-sentences and start behaving like a man who wants to live."
The old researcher looked toward Mira.
She had stepped away from the structure.
The enormous eye was still open.
"I didn't erase your memories," Elias said.
Daniel watched him carefully.
"Who did?"
"The First."
Silence settled over the chamber.
Then Daniel nodded.
"Excellent. We've established that the ancient nightmare has a name. Progress."
Elias continued.
"The original structure contains a biological network. Not merely a collection of organisms, but a system capable of storing and transmitting information through living tissue. We found traces of it beneath the Walls decades ago."
"How many decades?"
"Long before the fall of Shiganshina."
Daniel glanced at Arlen.
The boy looked equally disturbed.
Elias continued.
"We believed it was dormant. We were wrong. The experiments were intended to reproduce certain properties of the network without allowing the original intelligence to access the subjects."
"And you failed."
"Repeatedly."
"Thirty-seven dead subjects, if I remember correctly."
Elias flinched.
Daniel smiled without humor.
"Your experiments were a remarkable success. Only thirty-seven corpses and one walking disaster. Someone should give you a medal."
"I deserved worse than a medal."
"That's the first sensible thing you've said."
The structure groaned.
A thin crack appeared across its surface.
Mira turned sharply.
"He's opening the passage."
Elias looked toward the central machine.
"No. That should be impossible."
"People keep saying that today," Daniel muttered. "I'm beginning to suspect the word has lost its meaning."
A new alarm sounded.
The display on the central machine flashed red.
[CONTAINMENT FAILURE.]
[LOWER CHAMBER SEAL: COMPROMISED.]
[NETWORK SYNCHRONIZATION: 41%.]
[WARNING: MULTIPLE TITAN SIGNATURES DETECTED.]
Daniel's stomach tightened.
"Multiple what?"
Elias moved toward the display.
"Titans."
"Yes, I understood the words. I was hoping you'd tell me why your underground basement is apparently full of them."
"Not in the facility."
Elias zoomed in on a map of the district.
Dozens of small red markers had appeared across Trost.
Some were moving toward the outer gate.
Others were converging on the same location.
The laboratory.
Daniel stared at the screen.
"Those are Titans in the city."
"Yes."
"Then why are they coming here?"
Elias didn't answer immediately.
The markers continued to move.
Then Daniel noticed something.
The Titans weren't moving randomly.
Their paths curved around buildings, streets, and obstacles, gradually forming a broad ring around the facility.
It looked almost deliberate.
As if something were guiding them.
[FOREIGN NETWORK ACTIVITY DETECTED.]
[EXTERNAL BIOLOGICAL UNITS: 29.]
[BEHAVIORAL SYNCHRONIZATION: INCREASING.]
[WARNING: HOSTILE ORGANISMS MAY BE RESPONDING TO THE FIRST.]
Daniel stared at the last message.
"You're telling me that thing can control Titans?"
"Not necessarily control," Elias replied. "Influence. Coordinate. Perhaps awaken instincts that already exist within them."
"That distinction is very comforting."
"It should be. If it could fully control them, we would already be dead."
Daniel considered that.
"You're remarkably bad at making people feel better."
"I'm a scientist, not a priest."
"Judging by your career, you might have been better off as a priest."
A deafening crash shook the facility.
Something struck the outer entrance.
Once.
Twice.
On the third impact, the heavy metal door bent inward.
Arlen backed away.
"Tell me that's not a Titan."
Elias looked at the door.
"I don't know what it is."
"Brilliant."
Daniel's system pulsed.
A new notification appeared.
[EVOLUTIONARY ALERT.]
[UNKNOWN BIOLOGICAL SIGNATURE DETECTED.]
[COMPATIBILITY: 3.7%.]
[PREVIOUSLY ENCOUNTERED SIGNATURE CONFIRMED.]
Daniel felt his blood turn cold.
The pale-eyed man had spoken of the same signature before.
The unknown foreign biological presence.
The one connected to the system's origins.
The door buckled again.
Something scratched at the other side.
Then a voice drifted through the metal.
"Daniel."
Arlen went rigid.
Elias stopped breathing.
Daniel recognized the voice.
Not because he'd heard it clearly before.
Because he'd heard it in his nightmares.
It was wet and broken, as though the speaker were trying to talk through a mouth filled with water.
"Daniel Cross."
The door bent inward.
"I found you."
Daniel took a step back.
"Oh, come on."
The metal tore open.
A pale hand reached through the gap.
It was too long.
Too thin.
Its fingers ended in dark, hooked nails.
The creature pulled.
The entire door came off its hinges and crashed across the floor.
Standing in the entrance was the eyeless creature Daniel had encountered in the streets of Trost.
Its skin hung loosely from its body. Its head tilted at an unnatural angle, and the vertical mouth splitting its face opened to reveal rows of tiny human teeth.
Blood dripped from its fingers.
It looked at Daniel despite having no eyes.
"Found you."
Arlen seized a metal rod from the floor.
Daniel glanced at it.
"Your weapon is a stick."
"It's a metal stick."
"Ah. My mistake. We may yet survive."
The creature's mouth stretched wider.
"You're changing."
Daniel felt the hunger stir beneath his ribs.
The creature inhaled.
Its entire body shuddered.
"You're becoming more like him."
"Who?" Daniel demanded.
The creature took one step into the laboratory.
"The one beneath the Walls."
Mira backed away from it.
For the first time since appearing in the facility, she looked genuinely afraid of something other than the First.
"Don't let it touch you," she whispered.
Daniel kept his eyes on the creature.
"Why?"
"Because it remembers what you were."
The creature's head twisted toward her.
Its mouth closed.
For several seconds, it remained completely still.
Then it spoke in a different voice.
A child's voice.
Soft.
Familiar.
"Daniel, please."
Daniel's heart stopped.
He knew that voice.
Not from the world inside the Walls.
From somewhere beyond it.
Somewhere he could no longer reach.
The creature's mouth opened again.
"Please don't leave me here."
Daniel staggered.
The laboratory disappeared for half a second.
He saw a corridor filled with smoke.
A small hand slipping from his grasp.
A door closing.
Someone screaming his name.
Then the image vanished.
The system flashed violently.
[WARNING: FOREIGN MEMORY INJECTION DETECTED.]
[COGNITIVE FIREWALL: UNDER ATTACK.]
[NEURAL STABILITY: 61%.]
Daniel gritted his teeth.
"You don't get to use that."
The creature tilted its head.
"What?"
"Whatever you think you know about me."
He stepped forward.
"You don't get to wear my memories like a fucking mask."
The creature screamed.
The sound struck the laboratory like a physical blow.
Glass shattered.
Arlen fell to one knee, clutching his ears. Elias dropped the metal device he had been holding.
Daniel felt blood trickle from his nose.
The creature lunged.
He barely moved in time.
Its claws tore through his coat and sliced across his shoulder.
Pain exploded down his arm.
Daniel stumbled into a workbench, knocking instruments to the floor.
The creature turned toward him again.
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: CRITICAL.]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: EVASION.]
[AVAILABLE ADAPTATION: TEMPORARY MUSCULAR RECRUITMENT.]
[ENERGY RESERVES: INSUFFICIENT FOR SUSTAINED ENGAGEMENT.]
Daniel spat blood onto the floor.
"Then we'll have to make this quick."
He activated the adaptation.
Heat surged through his muscles.
His wounded shoulder screamed as the system forced damaged tissue to recruit surrounding muscle fibers. His right arm tightened, but the pain was worse than before.
The adaptation was not healing him.
It was simply convincing his body to keep working while injured.
A terrible bargain.
Exactly the kind he had come to expect.
The creature lunged again.
Daniel ducked beneath its arm and slammed his shoulder into its ribs.
The impact sent it staggering sideways.
He grabbed a heavy steel instrument tray and swung it into the creature's head.
Metal struck bone.
The creature barely reacted.
It backhanded him across the chamber.
Daniel hit the floor hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.
Arlen rushed forward and drove the metal rod into the creature's leg.
The rod bent.
The creature looked down at him.
Arlen froze.
"Daniel," he said quietly, "I think it hates me."
"Get in line!"
Daniel forced himself upright.
The creature reached for Arlen.
Daniel moved before he could think.
He grabbed a fallen scalpel from the floor and drove it into the creature's wrist.
The blade sank between pale tendons.
Black fluid sprayed across his hand.
The creature recoiled with a shriek.
Daniel seized Arlen by the collar and dragged him away.
"Run!"
They sprinted toward the far side of the laboratory.
Elias was already moving toward a narrow maintenance corridor.
"This way!"
Daniel followed, dragging Arlen behind him.
The creature recovered faster than it should have.
Its limbs snapped back into place with a series of wet cracks.
It began crawling across the ceiling.
Daniel looked up.
"Oh, that's just cheating."
The creature scuttled over the lights, its hooked fingers digging into concrete.
Mira stood in the middle of the chamber.
She wasn't running.
She was staring at the ancient structure.
The enormous eye had begun to close.
"No," she whispered.
The creature dropped from the ceiling.
Straight toward her.
Daniel saw it happen.
He knew he couldn't reach her in time.
His body was injured. His adaptation was failing. His energy reserves were nearly empty.
The system displayed a final warning.
[EMERGENCY EVOLUTION AVAILABLE.]
[PROPOSED ADAPTATION: PREDATORY REFLEX ACCELERATION.]
[COMPATIBILITY: 18%.]
[EXPECTED BENEFIT: SHORT-TERM REACTION SPEED INCREASE.]
[EXPECTED COST: SEVERE NEURAL STRAIN.]
[WARNING: CURRENT NEURAL STABILITY TOO LOW.]
Daniel stared at the notification.
"No."
The creature descended.
Mira raised her head.
Her black eyes met his.
"Daniel!"
He moved.
Not because he had a plan.
Not because he believed he could win.
He moved because a child was about to die, and he had already spent too much of his life apparently failing to save her.
"Activate it!"
[WARNING—]
"DO IT!"
The world slowed.
Not completely.
Not like time had stopped.
Instead, Daniel's senses seemed to accelerate beyond the limits of his body.
He saw the creature's fingers spreading.
He saw the movement of its shoulders.
He saw a loose cable swinging above the floor.
He saw the exact instant its claws would reach Mira's neck.
Then his muscles responded.
Daniel crossed the distance in a burst of motion and slammed into Mira, knocking her out of the creature's path.
The claws caught his back.
Pain tore through him.
He and Mira hit the floor together.
The creature struck the ground where she had stood, cracking the concrete.
Daniel rolled, shielding the girl with his body.
His vision flashed white.
[ADAPTATION COMPLETE.]
[PREDATORY REFLEX ACCELERATION: TEMPORARY.]
[NEURAL STABILITY: 29%.]
[WARNING: FURTHER NEURAL OVERLOAD MAY CAUSE IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE.]
Daniel could barely move.
The creature turned toward him.
Its mouth opened.
"Why?"
Daniel dragged Mira behind him.
"Because I'm an idiot."
"Why do you protect her?"
"Apparently, it's a recurring character flaw."
The creature lowered its head.
"You failed her before."
Daniel's fingers trembled.
"Then I'll try not to make the same mistake twice."
The creature stared at him.
For a moment, something almost human moved across its ruined face.
Grief.
Then hatred swallowed it.
"HE IS AWAKE."
The words shook the chamber.
The ancient structure answered.
A deep pulse traveled through the floor.
Every light went out.
In the darkness, Daniel heard the sound of something enormous moving beneath them.
Not inside the laboratory.
Not even beneath the facility.
Far below.
Deep beneath the foundations of the Walls.
The sound was so vast that Daniel felt it in his teeth.
Then the system spoke.
[GLOBAL BIOLOGICAL NETWORK ACTIVITY DETECTED.]
[NETWORK SYNCHRONIZATION: 63%.]
[UNKNOWN ENTITY DESIGNATION: THE FIRST.]
[AWAKENING STATUS: ACTIVE.]
[HOST CROSS IDENTIFIED AS PRIMARY CATALYST.]
[WARNING: EXTERNAL ORGANISMS RESPONDING.]
Above them, through layers of stone and earth, hundreds of Titans began to scream.
Daniel felt Mira clutch his sleeve.
She was shaking.
"He knows you're here," she whispered.
"Yes," Daniel said weakly. "I'm getting that impression."
"No. You don't understand."
Her black eyes reflected the emergency lights as they flickered back to life.
"He doesn't just want you."
The floor split open.
A jagged crack raced between Daniel and the creature, widening until the stone beneath their feet began to collapse.
Elias shouted something from the maintenance corridor.
Arlen grabbed Daniel's arm.
But Daniel couldn't look away from Mira.
She leaned closer and whispered the words that finally made him understand why the First had been calling him home.
"He wants you to finish what you started."
The floor gave way.
Daniel, Mira, and the creature plunged into darkness.
And somewhere beneath the Walls, something ancient opened its mouth and called Daniel Cross by a name he had not heard since before he died.
"Come home, my son."